Monica Lewinsky disclosed new details about her White House affair with former President Bill Clinton in an interview for an upcoming A&E docuseries about the scandal.
“No monkey business happened inside the Oval office proper,” Lewinsky said in a clip from the docuseries aired Thursday on “Good Morning America.” “We would talk and maybe flirt here or there, but no sexual activity happened in the office.”
She added that “every intimate encounter took place” in Clinton’s personal office, which sits directly next to the Oval Office.
“There were always ways that we talked about it: How do we be careful? Of course, you’re going to deny this. We were both cautious, but not cautious enough,” Lewinsky said of her conversations with Clinton at the time.
The clip also includes secretly recorded conversations between Lewinsky and her former confidante, fellow White House employee Linda Tripp. Tripp later handed over the recordings to independent investigator Kenneth Starr, proving that Lewinsky had lied in a sworn affidavit.
“I did feel uncomfortable about [lying], but I felt it was the right thing to do, ironically,” Lewinsky said in the interview.
Lewinsky and Clinton’s infamous affair began when she was 22 and the president was 49. It lasted from 1995 to 1997, and was publicly revealed in 1998. Although Lewinsky herself has said the relationship was consensual, she deemed it a “gross abuse of power” in a Vanity Fair essay published in March.
“I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote in the essay. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances — and the ability to abuse them — do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)”
Lewinsky, who has mostly avoided the spotlight since the scandal, explained her decision to be featured in the A&E docuseries in another Vanity Fair essay published this week.
“Why did I choose to participate in this docuseries? One main reason: because I could,” she wrote. “Throughout history, women have been traduced and silenced. Now, it’s our time to tell our own stories in our own words.”
“The Clinton Affair” premieres on A&E at 9 p.m. on Nov. 18.